Professor Gaynor Kavanagh DPhil MPhil FMA

Specialist Subject Areas

Memory, objects and the senses; memory, identity and life stages; museum studies; historiographic curatorial practices; museum management; museum ethics and professional practice; social history of First World War.

Qualifications

MPhil (Leicester) DPhil (UWE) Fellow of the Museums Association

Biography

Professor Kavanagh was educated at Abersychan Grammar-Technical School and studied history and then museum studies at the University of Leicester. She holds both a DPhil and an MPhil. A qualified and experienced curator, she was part of the world-renowned Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester between 1980 and 1999. She left to set up the Graduate School at Bath Spa University.

Between 2000 and 2004 she was Dean of Media and Culture at Falmouth College of Art. Professor Kavanagh then took a year out because of her father’s failing health, during which time she taught museum studies on a fractional basis at Winchester School of Art and chaired their Research Committee. She became head of Cardiff School of Art & Design at Cardiff Metropolitan University (UWIC) in October 2005 and was made Dean in August 2006. Professor Kavanagh retired from the University in October 2015.

She has been an advisor to the National Railway Museum, York, the National Museum of Wales and the National Audit Office. She is the author of three books, including Dream Spaces (2000) and has edited a further seven books.

In 2014, Professor Kavanagh was appointed by the Wales Assembly to the Expert Panel convened to review Local Government Museums in Wales. The Panel’s report was published by the Assembly in September 2015.

She continues to advise arts and museums bodies and is involved with a number of training and development initiatives.

Current research

Her most recent project, which was funded by the British Academy, is called Material Difficulties: Objects and Narratives that Disturb and Affect. She is interested in the importance of the senses in the making of meaning, especially where memory is impaired or subject to extremes of experience.

Professor Kavanagh is currently developing a publication on working with objects and space in educational and therapeutic environments.

(2007), Kavanagh, G, ‘Museums in a Broken World’ in J. Osmond (ed),
Myths, Memories and Futures: the National Library and National Museum in the Story of Wales, p47-57, Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs